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Het Nieuwe Uit Eten

Because it’s not super interesting for the non Dutch speakers among you to receive a Dutch post in your email once a month, I’ve decided to write the English version below the Dutch one. Please do keep in mind that, due to the language and culture difference, some of the nuances may have gotten lost in translation!

The time when getting a pizza delivered to your door was the only option is long gone. Deliveroo, UberEATS, Just EAt, every where you look you see sweaty delivery guys pedalling away on their bicycles. Thai, Mexican, British, pretty much every single kitchen is available and easy to order via an App – what else? -on your smartphone.

Delivering food in the 21st century is big business. In the UK for example, the entire food delivery industry was worth 9 billion pounds in 2014, and in Holland the total market value is estimated at 695 million euros. Like I said, it’s massive, and chances are these numbers will continue to grow over the next couple of years. The varied and good quality offer from the different food delivery platforms has turned ‘ordering in’ into an attractive alternative for cooking something yourself. On top of that, we live in an era in which everything has to be on-demand: your taxi, your favourite TV – or now probably Netflix – series, and – thus – your dinner too. An online platform offering people the possibility to order pretty much every possible dish in the world fits perfectly within this on-demand trend.

Investors seem to love everything that smells like Food Tech – online delivery platforms such as UberEATS and Just Eat – anyway. Deliveroo for example, needed money in order to continue to grow aggressively, and managed to ‘simply’ raise 275 million dollar last summer. Social media giant Facebook appears to see something in the delivery story too; the company recently announced several new features allowing US users to order (among other things) meals via Facebook very soon.

Let’s be honest: it does all sound very tempting. Especially if after a long day you come home and you have the choice between slaving away in the kitchen for half an hour, or immediately crash on the sofa and order a (semi) healthy meal inbetween 2 Whatsapp messages. It probably won’t be long before you can order even a romantic dinner for two with your smartphone, if that isn’t the case already. I do wonder though, what consequences the rise of delivery services will have on our cooking behaviour. Ten years from now, will we still be using the kitchen? Or will the kitchen as we know it be long gone by then and will all of us have switched to ‘the New Eating’? Telling our smartphone what we want to have for dinner when we’re on our way back from work, making sure the food gets delivered at exactly the same time we get home. I’m intrigued.